Consumer Narcotics

In a story I had to read primarily from foreign news sources, one of the best kept secrets the last few days is another massive drop in the annual budget deficit under Barack Obama.

Even more hilarious is that at least one news outlet that did cover this story — Bloomberg — chose to put in the headline that the deficit is “higher” …than expected, without telling the casual reader that the deficit is actually LOWER than it was last year, as one who reads their story would find out.

Add to that another drop in people filing for unemployment and the argument can be made that intentional or not, the media does not want you to focus too much on economic news that does not fit the anti-government narrative.

So immediately we are all to think the situation is worse than ever, that is until we start reading and find that this huge number is a bit larger than previous estimates and is cumulative. It’s not like 30,000 have joined SINCE the efforts to stop them have begun. More importantly, buried way deep in the story is the following information:

“ISIS no longer has the momentum in its core territory of Syria and Iraq,” said Peter Neumann, director of the center and a professor of security studies at King’s College. “It’s no longer the ever-expanding jihadist utopia that it seemed to be.”

So while the headline screams “deteriorating calamity,” what we actually learn is that ISIS’s expansion has been halted and as we learn elsewhere in the article there is a growing trend of defection and people speaking out against the ISIS Utopian myth.

This is a classic case where the media wants you to read a headline and panic even though the very delivery system of this particular freak out contains all the information you need to take a deep breath and understand all is not lost. Yet.

This one is worth citing because while it’s headline suggests Trump is being wronged by the media, it covers him at a state fair in Oklahoma City where the crowd clearly loves him. That’s pretty good coverage in my eyes.

Here’s the issue with this story: it never bothers to point out to the reader that there’s no explanation for Trump being in Oklahoma, other than his mission to go anywhere he can find a friendly crowd. That’s not a presidential candidate. It’s an Off Broadway show.

The first contest for the nomination is Iowa. The first actual vote, in New Hampshire. Then comes South Carolina. Oklahoma doesn’t come into play until March, on a day when (as of now) 14 States, including delegate rich Texas will vote. So why is Donald Trump, the Manhattan Billionaire, hauling his 747 to the heartland at the end of September 2015? My guess is that is where he was able to find a crowd.

And the net-worth of that crowd? That’s what I’d like to see the media figure out, both with and without Trump in attendance.

We already know Donald Trump — who has declared he will be the greatest jobs president ever — farms the manufacturing of his clothing line out to China and Indonesia, even though he once declared on The Late Show With David Letterman that he was “up for” opening a factory in Queens and employing local’s. Now we learn that he uses a program usually employed by tech companies to bring in highly specialized foreign software and computing workers, to staff his Mira-Largo Palm Beach Resort.

The descent is gaining speed and the crash and burn are starting to come more clearly into focus. The odiousness of this bloviating arrogant hypocrite is catching up to him, as it was clear it always would.

In response to a certain rich guy throwing a lot of money around on hats and T-Shirts I hereby declare Barry Who’s 2016 Scampaign theme:

“Make America Think Again.”

This should be the rule before we let America vote again. Annoy the media. Think for yourself. And do not be influenced by an off night TV show host who has never undertaken a single public works project without benefiting himself and screwing others.

While the media wolf-pack is still focused on the blowhard who will not be president, very quietly and strategically, the sitting Governor of a key swing-state with 18 electoral college votes, who also happens to have had 20 years in the House Of Representatives, is climbing the ladder in the polls.

John Kasich was one of Newt Gingrich’s top lieutenant’s back in the day when government was being shut down because Newt had to exit the back of the President’s plane. Since then, he moved on to a second career in banking and then a third as governor of Ohio. So while the pack mentality stays focused on a narcissistic blowhard who believes he was born with all the innate knowledge he will ever need, this guy, with a resume that just might fool folks into thinking he is actually qualified to be in the race, has climbed to second in the polls in the first state that actually votes. He is also proceeding calmly and intelligently, pacing himself for the marathon while others still think it’s a sprint.

This one is almost a week old, but worth storing here for my own use later. In this episode, Chris Wallace of all people, on Fox New Sunday, of all broadcasts, bitch slaps Dick Cheney who is so busy trying to tag Barack Obama as Neville Chamberlin that he’s willing to ignore those irratating little things called “facts”.

In short, Wallace reminds Cheney that when they took office, Iran had Zero (0) centrifuges for developing fissile nuclear material and when they left Iran had 5,000. That’s in addition to having removed the balance of power that kept Iran tied up in the region and disbanding the only military they feared — Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

So when I hear the right tell me it’s Barack Obama who is weak for negotiating a deal getting 20,000 centrifuges down to 5,000 and delaying an Iranian nuke from being ready three months from now until a decade from now, if the treaty holds, I really can’t help but cheer: Hyp Hyp Hypocrisy. And if the treaty doesn’t hold, military action will still be as viable an option then as it is now.

Here’s a more complete report on the the interview between Wallace and Cheney:

I’m not a big Facebook guy. I understand it’s importance to comics and artists when it comes to letting folks know you’re working. I also understand some people just like to announce what they are having for dinner. One thing I know for sure is that Facebook is a horrible place to argue politics.

Case in point: A 1995 study updated in 2013, done at the always biased CATO Institute, which I saw posted today as if it were new news. That study purports to prove that welfare is a better gig than working in more than 30 of our united states. I immediately got the whiff of suspicion and found a more sobering piece that describes the ways CATO took every possible welfare program and in theory assigned maximum income to all recipients. In reality, according to this piece by Josh Barro at Business Insider, they didn’t allow for the fact that benefiting from one or several of the programs excludes recipients from benefiting from all the rest.

In short, CATO took liberty with their assumptions and then posted a finding they were looking for. In so doing, they also helped to keep the public mis-informed in perpetuity and forever.

Anecdotally, There are plenty of examples to be found of people abusing the system. But in the aggregate, for the vast majority, welfare is never a better gig than a good job.

As an aside: I think Donald Trump should help by using some of his billions to open a factory in Queens where he can get Americans off of welfare and back to work sewing his Donald J. Trump Collection of shirts and ties. These ties are great. They are fantastic. People are gonna love my ties.

And just because I’m old fashioned and believe in double sourcing as much as possible, here is a second blog I found written by Mike Dunford, who I do not know, but who seems to have done his homework.

Dunford concludes: “Cato’s statement that, “The current welfare system provides such a high level of benefits that it acts as a disincentive for work,” is not just a lie in general, it’s a lie in all 50 states and in the District of Columbia.”

There is nothing better than a guy condescendingly telling a young woman she is misquoting him and then having the proof at hand.

Check out this story and video from EcoWatch as Christie is asked how he could have said human breathing contributes to global warning and then he gets all nasty denying it. But the video in this case does not lie.